Syftet med vår uppsats är att ur ett sociologiskt samhällsteoretiskt perspektiv, ge både oss själva och läsaren en ökad förståelse för och synliggöra flickor från vissa etniska grupper och deras intim- och familjerelationer i Sverige. För att kunna förstå flickornas eventuella problem och konflikter i familjen tar vi hjälp av Niklas Luhmanns systemteori och hans analys av intima relationer och familjen i det moderna samhället. De frågeställningar som besvaras är: • Vilka skillnader mellan det förmoderna och moderna samhällets syn på intim- och familjerelationer ställs flickorna i vårt material inför? • Hur kan dessa skillnader tolkas och förstås utifrån Luhmanns systemteoretiska analys av den moderna familjen? Vår studie är ett teoretiskt arbete och grundar sig på litteraturstudier. För att kunna besvara våra frågeställningar har vi inspirerats av och löst anknutit oss till en abduktiv metod. Undersökningen tar sin utgångspunkt dels i en nyligen gjord studie av Åsa Andersson, Inte samma lika (2003), och dels i den internationellt erkände sociologen Niklas Luhmanns systemteori och hans analys av intima relationer och familjen. För att kunna få en sociologisk samhällsteoretisk förståelse för och kunna placera in familjen i det moderna samhällets kontext presenterar vi de delar av Luhmanns teori och begreppsapparat som vi ansåg relevanta för ämnet. Det gör vi för att kunna förstå hur familjen fungerar i det moderna samhället. Sammanfattningsvis kan vi konstatera att de skillnader i synen på intim- och familjerelationer som flickorna har att förhålla sig till finns i såväl den offentliga som den privata sfären. Skillnaderna är flera under respektive sfär men de mest framträdande skillnaderna handlar om moral och förnuft där familjen och den egna etniska gruppen använder mekanismer som skam och skuld för att reducera en ökad kontingens och komplexitet som råder i det moderna samhället. Utifrån flickornas beskrivningar kan vi förstå att deras förväntningar i hög grad skiljer sig från föräldrarnas såväl i valet av äktenskapspartner, hemarbete, mer frihet och ökad jämställdhet i form av utbildning och ekonomiskt oberoende. Utifrån en systemteoretisk synvinkel kan vi även se skillnader på såväl generell som specifik nivå, förändringar av intima relationer kan alltså kopplas till samhällsutvecklingen och dess semantiska koder knutna till familjen som system.

The recent increase in international projects has resulted in higher risk along with difficulties in control and coordination. Effective project management can therefore be seen as being essential to the success of projects. The purpose of this paper is to understand how a large multinational company currently handles these issues. This paper conducts a case study that will look at the relationship between contingencies and their effects on project risk management. The findings show that although project risk management handles contingencies in standard projects it still requires improvement within complex projects. Therefore, based on research into agile project management a concept is proposed as an alternative for the case company to select project management method.

This dissertation addresses the topic of manufacturing strategy, especially the manufacturing capabilities and operational performance of manufacturing plants. Manufacturing strategy research aims at providing a structured decision making approach to improve the economics of manufacturing and to make companies more competitive. The overall objective of this thesis is to investigate how manufacturing companies make use of different manufacturing practices or bundles of manufacturing practices to develop certain sets of capabilities, with the ultimate goal of supporting the market requirements. The thesis aims to increase the understanding of the role of operations management and its immediate impact on manufacturing performance. Following the overall research objective three areas are identified to be of particular interest; to investigate (i) the relationship among different dimensions of operational performance, (ii) the way different performance dimensions are affected by manufacturing practices or bundles of manufacturing practices, (iii) whether there are contingencies that may help explain the relationships between dimensions of manufacturing capabilities or the effects of manufacturing practices or bundles of manufacturing practices on operational performance. The empirical elements in this thesis use data from the High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project. The HPM project is an international study of manufacturing plants involving seven countries and three industries. The research contributes to several insights to the research area of manufacturing strategy and to practitioners in manufacturing operations. The thesis develops measurements for and tests the effects of several manufacturing practices on operational performance. The results are aimed at providing guidance for decision making in manufacturing companies. The most prominent implication for researchers is the manifestation of the customer order decoupling point as an important contingency variable to consider when studying manufacturing operations.

Post-recession, middle-aged parents may provide various types of support to their grown children and parents. In the current study, parents age 40 to 60 (N =92) reported on a survey the support and affection they exchange with each child over age 18 (N =169) and each parent (N=185). The middle-aged generation (G2) differentiated among children (G3) and parents (G1) within families, and provided emotional, financial, and practical help on average to their children. The more dependent the child (G3), the more support was exchanged. Dependence was measured on normative status like education, employment, disability, and crisis as well as the emotional support and the overall affection. Parents (G1) received as a function of their dependence upon their children. Findings support contingency theory; downstream flow is more common in both physical and emotional support. Furthermore, the motivation the phenomenon is explained based on developmental stake theory and developmental schism to assure support later in life and progeny success. Finally, additional analysis of the upstream support found that a function of the existing relationship and individual factors based on caregiver burden, filial maturity, and appraisal impact the support exchange.

This study explored the effect of directions on the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale; specifically, this study tested whether thinking of a generalized least preferred coworker (General LPC) would yield lower scores compared to thinking of a specific least preferred coworker (Specific LPC). The data supported this hypothesis as responses to the General LPC yielded more critical LPC scores than did responses to the Specific LPC. The hypothesis that thinking of a generalized least preferred coworker would yield more stable result than would thinking of a specific least preferred coworker was not supported. Finally, the hypothesis that LPC scores would shift categories (e.g., shifting from task-oriented to relations-oriented) more when thinking of a specific least preferred coworker than when thinking of a general least preferred coworker was not supported. This study provides supportive evidence of the importance of using the original test directions during test administrations.

Brownfields redevelopment has been encouraged by governments or the real estate market because of economic, social and environmental benefits. However, uncertainties in contaminated land redevelopment may cause massive investment risk and need to be managed so that contaminated land redevelopment is facilitated. This study was designed to address hydrogeological as well as economic uncertainty in a hypothetical contaminated land redevelopment project and manage the risk from these uncertainties through the integration of the hydrogeological and economic uncertainties. Hydrogeological uncertainty is derived from incomplete site information, including aquifer heterogeneity, and must be assessed with scientific expertise, given the short history of redevelopment projects and their unique hydrogeological characteristics. Hydrogeological uncertainty has not yet been incorporated in one framework with the economic uncertainty that has been relatively well observed in financial markets. Two cases of Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid (NAPL) contamination were simulated using a physically-based hydrogeological model to address hydrogeological uncertainty: one concerns the effect of an ethanol spill on a light NAPL (LNAPL) contaminated area in the vadose zone, and the other is regarding the vapour phase intrusion of volatile organic compounds, in particular, Trichloroethylene (TCE), a dense NAPL (DNAPL), into indoor air through a variably saturated heterogeneous aquifer. The first simulation replicated experimental observations in the laboratory, such as the capillary fringe depressing and the NAPL pool remobilizing and collecting in a reduced area exhibiting higher saturations than observed prior to an ethanol injection. However, the data gap, in particular, on the chemical properties between the model and the experiment caused the uncertainty in the model simulation. The second NAPL simulation has been performed based on a hypothetical scenario where new dwellings in a redeveloped area have the potential risk of vapour phase intrusion from a subsurface source into indoor air because remediation or foundation design might fail. The simulation results indicated that the aquifer heterogeneity seemed the most significant factor controlling the indoor air exposure risk from a TCE source in the saturated zone. Then, the exposure risk was quantified using Monte Carlo simulations with 50 statistically equivalent heterogeneous aquifer permeability fields. The quantified risk (probability) represents the hydrogeological uncertainty in the scenario and gives the information on loss occurrence intensity of redevelopment failure. Probability of failure (or loss occurrence intensity) was integrated with cost of failure (or loss magnitude) to evaluate the risk capital in the hypothetical brownfields redevelopment project. The term “risk capital” is adopted from financial literature and is the capital you can lose from high risk investment. Cost of failure involves economic uncertainty and can be defined based on a developer’s financial agreement with new dwellers to prevent litigation in the case of certain events, such as an environmental event where indoor air concentrations of pollutants exceed regulatory limits during periodic inspections. The developer makes such a financial agreement with new dwellers because new dwellings have been constructed founded on flawed site information, and municipalities may require it if a land use planning approval is required. An agreement was presumed that the developer would repurchase the affected houses from new dwellers immediately, if indoor air contamination exceeded the regulatory limit. Furthermore, the developer would remediate any remaining contamination, demolish the affected houses and build new houses if they were worth investing in. With this financial plan assumed, the stochastic housing price, stochastic inflation rate and stochastic interest rate have been considered to cause the uncertainty in the cost of failure, and the information on these stochastic variables was obtained from the financial market due to its long history of observations. This research reviewed appropriate risk capital valuation methods for hydrogeologists to apply straightforwardly to their projects, with integrating probability of failure (hydrogeological uncertainty) and cost of failure (economic uncertainty). The risk capital is essentially the probability of failure times the cost of failure with safety loading added to compensate investors against hydrogeological and financial uncertainty. Fair market prices of risk capital have been valuated using financial mathematics and actuarial premium calculations, and each method has a specific safety loading term to reflect investors’ level of risk aversion. Risk capital results indicated that the price of the risk capital was much more sensitive to hydrogeological uncertainty than financial uncertainty. Developers can manage the risk capital by saving a contingency fee for future events or paying an insurance premium, given that the price of this risk capital is the price of a contingent claim, subsequent to failure in remediation or in foundation design, and equivalent to an environmental insurance premium if there is an insurance company to indemnify the liability for the developer. The optimal framework of investment strategy in brownfields redevelopment can be built by linkage of addressing and integrating uncertainties and valuating risk capital from the uncertainties. This framework involves balancing the costs associated with each step while maximizing a net profit from land redevelopment. The optimal investment strategy, such as if or when to remediate or redevelop and to what degree, is given when the future price of the land minus time and material costs as well as the contingency fee or insurance premium maximizes a net profit.

Recent studies show that when words are correlated with the colours they are printed in (e.g., MOVE is presented 75% of the time in blue), colour identification is faster when the word is presented in its expected colour (MOVE in blue) than in an unexpected colour (MOVE in green). The present series of experiments explored the possible mechanisms involved in this colour-word contingency learning effect. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the effect was already present after 18 learning trials. During subsequent unlearning, the effect extinguished equally rapidly, suggesting that only a handful of the most recently encountered trials are used to predict responses. Two reanalyses of data from Schmidt, Crump, Cheesman, and Besner (2007) ruled out an account of the effect in terms of stimulus repetitions. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants who carry a memory load do not show a contingency effect, supporting the hypothesis that limited-capacity resources are used to retrieve a small number of trial memories in order to prepare a response. Experiment 4 demonstrated that memory resources are required for both storage and retrieval processes.

One of the oldest and most fundamental problems in statistics is the analysis of cross-classified data called contingency tables. Analyzing contingency tables is typically a question of association - do the variables represented in the table exhibit special dependencies or lack thereof? The statistical models which best capture these experimental notions of dependence are the categorical conditional independence models; however, until recent discoveries concerning the strongly algebraic nature of the conditional independence models surfaced, the models were widely overlooked due to their unwieldy implicit description. Apart from the inferential question above, this thesis asks the more basic question - suppose such an experimental model of association is known, how can one incorporate this information into the estimation of the joint distribution of the table? In the traditional parametric setting several estimation paradigms have been developed over the past century; however, traditional results are not applicable to arbitrary categorical conditional independence models due to their implicit nature. After laying out the framework for conditional independence and algebraic statistical models, we consider three aspects of estimation in the models using the minimum Euclidean (L2E), minimum Pearson chi-squared, and minimum Neyman modified chi-squared distance paradigms as well as the more ubiquitous maximum likelihood approach (MLE). First, we consider the theoretical properties of the estimators and demonstrate that under general conditions the estimators exist and are asymptotically normal. For small samples, we present the results of large scale simulations to address the estimators' bias and mean squared error (in the Euclidean and Frobenius norms, respectively). Second, we identify the computation of such estimators as an optimization problem and, for the case of the L2E, propose two different methods by which the problem can be solved, one algebraic and one numerical. Finally, we present an R implementation via two novel packages, mpoly for symbolic computing with multivariate polynomials and catcim for fitting categorical conditional independence models. It is found that in general minimum distance estimators in categorical conditional independence models behave as they do in the more traditional parametric setting and can be computed in many practical situations with the implementation provided.

The master thesis project has been executed with the cooperation of Borlänge Energi, with the aim of reducing the high electric energy dependency which Moldova has on Ukraine, Transnistria and Russia. The project examines what reduction that would be possible by wind power installations on the existing electrical grid of Moldova. The installations should not surpass the capacity of the transmission lines or the voltage levels according to regulation. The southern regions of Moldova proved to have the best wind conditions and the locations of Besarabeasca, Zarnesti, Leovo, Ciadyr and Cimislia in the southern region were chosen for wind power installations. For the analysis a model over the Moldovan electrical system is constructed. Each of the five chosen locations is modelled with a generator symbolizing the wind power installation. The power flow software PSS/E is used to construct the model. To examine possible wind power installations different scenarios are created. The scenarios are executed with the southern regions 110 kV system as a focus area. All scenarios are analysed with a contingency analysis, where transmission lines in the focus region are tripped. The contingency analysis and the scenarios are automated using the programming language Python. An economic analysis shows payback periods for wind power investments in Moldova, the analysis also shows the sensitivity of the electricity price and discount rates. The project concludes that wind power installations are possible with the Moldovan electric grid as it looks today. The installations would result in reducing the high dependency of imported electrical energy.

The brand building process is investigated by looking at the strategy of a small to medium-sized fashion company, Hunky Dory AB. According to the model presented in this thesis, the brand building process consists of five stages; product attributes, brand identity, positioning, marketing communication, and distribution. These stages are investigated separately to see whether standardization, adaptation, or a contingency approach is used at each stage. It is found that Hunky Dory mainly standardize, or aim to standardize, the stages in their strategic brand building process across international markets. However, adaptation is to some extent necessary or inevitable in the stages product attributes, marketing communications and distribution. The only exception is a variable in distribution, the choice of stores, which is adapted to what suits the local market. In conclusion, Hunky Dory pursue a mix of standardization and adaptation, which supports the contingency perspective.